Life’s Purpose Has Meanings №1

Can we find our purpose by studying Animals cavorting on trees?

What happened when I saw two squirrels playing a game of tag along a slender branch of an overgrown Eucalyptus tree

Why are they perfectly happy and content and yet Miserable are we?

Perhaps they knew something we don’t.

I saw two squirrels cavorting along a slender branch of an overgrown Eucalyptus tree.

The image struck me as I was coming out through a kitchen door that opens into an area at the back-house which leads to what we call a “dirty kitchen” the place where in a poor country like ours, we murder live chickens, slice fresh meat, and do some barbecuing.

I looked up and saw a pair of cute greyish fluffies, with whiskers, and both were engaged in neck-break over-speeding ride along a tree limb. I want to say they ran, but it was more like darts in a flurry and the image blurry. It was so fast as if one teleported from Point A to Point B. However, the fun in their bodies was unmistakeable.

I instantly became envious as I was nailed to a spot observing the couple’s game of aerial tag, dancing like Tasmanian devils high atop a tree.

One slip they’ll fall , for sure. But the complex play of tree-limb acrobatics mesmerized me.

The sound was unmistakeable joy. That was the music that they created as they went on with their childlike things.

One heart stopping moment in the choreography when Squirrel A finally was closing in to catch Squirrel B. And then all of a sudden, Squirrel B stopped in her tracks and she turned 360 degrees, like a beautiful Stephen Curry pivot that left his guard flatfooted.

In basketball, that is an impossible move to block once the defender has made the commitment to dash forward. In this case, Squirrel A can’t stop his momentum. And I saw the two, quick-exchanging places, like two tiny greyish-fluffy whirlwinds on a branch of an overgrown Eucalyptus tree.

It’s taxing to be human. And so when, I spied the two squirrels wrestling and canoodling precariously on a slender tree limb, the contentment and happiness of our furry animal friends on trees provoked a jealous response: Why can’t we?

One false move, and they’ll fall. Broken back and all. Yet, they were oblivious that a 40-year old man below was a voyeur of a fool eyeing their choreographed aerial dance.

I was struck by it, and I couldn’t move. My frozen body gave way to a smile. Because I just came out from a spat with my ever dearest wife. It was the normal verbal tussles that occur during the Pandemic as partners try to edge each other out when it comes to pre-scheduled household cooking, cleaning, washing, and all that hard work.

I wish I was like the sweet perfect husbands, the many that gets paraded and praised by their wives on Facebook. But I just call a spade a spade from time to time. I mean on occasions I can’t keep my mouth shut.

These squabbles are draining on ordinary days but twice sapping during Coronavirus season. Because my favorite exhaust valve is not watching TV all day, but to watch a great movie when there is good reason. But I have no excuse to leave the house, the malls are half-open this season. Cinema tickets, nowadays, some sort of a figment of my imagination.

It’s taxing to be human. And so when, I spied two squirrels wrestling and canoodling precariously on a slender tree limb, the contentment and happiness of our furry animal friends on trees provoked a jealous response: Why can’t we?

My finger stuck, pointing at the tree.

Part of the reason is that we overthink and we are over-cynical.

I did my best manifestation of that all too common human trait, a few moments after I sat down to ponder the carefree plays of the squirrels straddling the limbs of a Eucalyptus tree.

I said, well, they’re happy because they don’t worry about global hunger, food, or calories on food. Tuition fees, car loans, and student debts are big ideas that can’t fit into that small head of theirs. I sour-graped.

BTW, my spat with my ever dearest started when she asked about lunch for our kids. An innocent question that I interpreted wrongly as pregnant with other illegitimate meanings.

So, let me go back to that reverie. And I said, well, the squirrels are happy like hippies on a beach, because they don’t have lunch and dinner menus controlling their lives and they don’t have a grocery budget to wrestle with.

And then, I said, wait a minute. Hold on. The Eucalyptus tree which my furry friends consider as their Garden of Eden is an organic minority. A living wonder, that is merely a part of the few and the proud that still stood as guardians of the evergreen canopies. For every tree in our village, there are maybe 200 houses planted in between. A ratio that means we have destroyed the homes of my animal friends hiding on branches and over-speeding high above the leafy greens.

In other words, their food supply is in peril in the same way that many are uncertain if they’ll have nourishment the following week.

And yet the animals on trees cavort, canoodle and cuddle when it rains in spring.

They probably knew something I don’t

But what if that is the purpose we are called?

Yeah! What if, that is the Purpose, for what we are called?

To be childlike and carefree, regardless of the number of trees that are confirmed standing, to give home to their kind, and to the ants, butterflies, and bees.

A reaction to Dr Mehmet Yildiz invite to Level 2 and also a reaction to julian rogers who wrote: “When you nailed the move you practiced so many times.” coz it brought memories of that stupid DIY basketball court with rotten boards and misaligned hoop, nailed unto the middle-body of an old Tamarind tree in my neighbor’s backyard, yet I practiced my feet calloused, trying to master the ballerina’s pivot.

Thank you sirs. May the force be with y’all.